Damage to a joint of a patient may result from a variety of causes, including osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, trauma, and repetitive overuse. Osteoarthritis is a condition characterized by damage of the joint cartilage and resulting inflammation and pain. The cause of hip osteoarthritis is not known for certain, but is thought to be “wear and tear” in most cases. Some conditions may predispose the hip to osteoarthritis; e.g., a previous fracture of the joint. In osteoarthritis of the hip, the cartilage cushion may be thinner than normal, leaving bare spots on the bone. Bare bone on the head of the femur grinding against the bone of the pelvic socket causes mechanical pain. Fragments of cartilage floating in the joint may cause inflammation in the joint lining, which may also cause pain. Rheumatoid Arthritis (R.A.) starts in the synovium and is mainly “inflammatory”. The cause is not known; however, it is known that the condition leads to an eventual destruction of the joint cartilage. Bone next to the cartilage is also damaged; it becomes very soft, frequently making the use of an un-cemented implant impossible. Lupus is another form of hip arthritis that is mainly “inflammatory”. Osteonecrosis is a condition in which part of the femoral head dies. This dead bone can not stand up to the stresses of walking. As a result, the femoral head collapses and becomes irregular in shape. The joint then becomes more painful. The most common causes of osteonecrosis are excessive alcohol use and excessive use of cortisone-containing medications.
Implanted prosthetics have been used to replace various components of an affected joint. For example, total hip joint replacement (arthroplasty) surgeries are becoming more prevalent. One common arthroplasty technique uses a cemented femoral implant (i.e., a prosthesis). Undesirably, cemented implants often loosen, causing pain and requiring subsequent surgeries. Alternatively, cementless implants often require an extended period of bone-ingrowth in order for a patient to regain full use of the joint. During the recovery period, the patient with a cementless implant is often required to use crutches or other weight-bearing mechanical assistance to avoid fully loading the implant.
For the structure of the femur prior to arthroplasty, the load distribution can be essentially resolved into an axial component, two bending moments and a torsional moment, which depend on leg stance. The distribution of these load components is changed after the arthroplasty. Conventional methods of prosthesis fixation allow for transfer of axial loads to the bone mainly through shear stresses at the bone-implant interface. (The muscles attached to the femur transfer load and moments as before the arthroplasty). The bending moment is effectively transferred to the bone, primarily through a contact between the prosthesis and the bone in two or more localized regions. In addition, the great disparity in the stiffness of a metallic prosthesis and the surrounding bone reduces bending displacements, changing the bending moment distribution in the surrounding bone.
Conventional femoral prostheses include an elongated stem for insertion into a surgically created cavity in a bone. The elongated stem may provide for accelerated integration of the prosthesis and an early recovery, but potentially at the expense of long-term stability. Because biomechanical forces will be transferred to distal regions of the implanted prosthesis (i.e., “distal bypass”), bone resorption may occur in more proximal portions of the bone—a process known as “stress shielding.” This bone resorption is a consequence of a natural process in which bone remodels in response to applied stresses. Bone density tends to increase in response to applied stress and decrease in response to removal of stress. Proximal bone resorption, along with a levering effect of a long stem, may cause loosening of the prosthesis over time.
An additional source of implant failure results from acetabular wear particles, which induce an inflammatory response in the patient. The resulting chronic inflammation may cause bone loss through osteolysis.
A further source of cemented implant failure is through degradation of the cement over the course of several decades. For this reason, practitioners disfavor the use of cemented implants in younger people.
Most femoral implants are introduced by hammering the stem into an aperture in the bone to create an interference fit. This procedure carries a risk of fracturing the bone, which is estimated by some sources to be in the range of 1-3%.
Recently, “stemless” implants have been begun to be adopted in Europe. See, e.g., Santori, “Proximal load transfer with a stemless uncemented femoral implant” J. Ortopaed Traumatol (2006) 7:154-160. Stemless implants may avoid at least some stress shielding by selectively transferring loads to more proximal bone regions. However, because of inherently lower primary (initial) stability, these stemless implants may require a longer recovery period than conventional stemmed implants and patients must limit weight bearing (e.g., by using crutches) during recovery. Advani, U.S. Pat. No. 6,379,390, discloses a stemless hip prosthesis that includes a cable for wrapping around a reconstructed femur in order to secure the prosthesis.
The success of a hip replacement can be adversely affected by periprosthetic infection, which can have immense financial and psychological costs. Common measures, including the use of body exhaust systems, laminar airflow, prophylactic antibiotics, and various other precautions, have been successful in reducing the incidence of periprosthetic infection. Despite these measures, it is believed that deep infection still occurs after 1 to 5 percent of joint replacements. The incidence is even higher in some high risk patients, such as patients with diabetes, patients with remote history of infection, and patients with inflammatory arthropathies.
Orthopedic scientists have been attempting to design a biologically active implant surface that prevents periprosthetic infection. One strategy is to apply drugs to the surface of implants, such as cemented or cementless implants. Current cementless hip and knee implants, for example, are wedged into the femoral or tibial bone by means of a hammering the implant with a mallet to drive the implant into the pre-drilled bone cavity. A tight interference fit between the implant and femoral bone, however, may undesirably scrape and/or squeegee off any drugs applied to the surface of the implant stem.
Shape memory materials are known in the art. See, for example, Mantovi, D., “Shape Memory Alloys Properties and Biomedical Applications,” Journal of Materials (2000). In particular, shape memory alloys, the most common of which is Nitinol, a nickel-titanium alloy, exist in a martensitic state below a first temperature and an austenitic state above a second temperature. Because the different states have different geometries, a temperature change can lead to a change in shape of an object made from shape memory material.
Nitinol exhibits various characteristics depending on the composition of the alloy and its thermal and work history. For example, the transition temperature or range may be altered. Nitinol can exhibit 1-way or 2-way shape memory effects. A 1-way shape-memory effect results in a substantially irreversible change upon crossing the transition temperature, whereas a 2-way shape-memory effect allows the material to repeatedly switch between alternate shapes in response to temperature cycling. Two-way shape-memory typically requires a cyclic working of the material; this is commonly performed by cyclically pulling on the material in tension. Additionally, Nitinol may be used in a pseudoelastic mode based on the formation of stress-induced martensite. Pseudoelastic Nitinol is typically employed at a temperature well above its transition temperature.
One common use of Nitinol in medical devices is its use in arterial stents. To this end, much research has been performed to test the life cycles and other wear properties of Nitinol wires. At least one study found that Nitinol wire has a mode of failure due to bending and compression that is not found in other materials such as austenitic stainless steel.